His jaw is clenched, effortlessly holding me up with just one arm as he grips onto the edge of the roof, keeping us both from falling to our gruesome deaths below. “Over my dead fucking body,” Levi growls from above me. “I’m not nearly through with you yet. Especially not now.”
Tears fall from my eyes as I squirm beneath his bruising grip. “Let me go,” I beg, reaching up and attempting to claw at his impenetrable hold. “Please. I just want to go home.”
“That pool below you,” he growls between his clenched jaw, pulling hard on my arm and yanking me back up toward him, “is not a fucking pool. There’s no water in it. You would have been dead the second you hit the ground.”
My eyes widen in horror as I look down, desperately trying to see through the darkness, but it’s too far down. I allowed my desperation to give me a false sense of hope and because of that, I threw myself off the goddamn roof. “THE FUCK?” I screech, panic settling deep inside my soul.
Levi hoists me up, and just as my body hits the edge of the roof, he gives me a hard shove, throwing me back a few steps until I’m sprawled out on the old tiles.
He pulls himself up and I stare at him in horror as his furious rage locks on me. I scramble back up the roof as he stalks me, slowly creeping closer and closer. “I thought we made ourselves quite clear about your attempts to escape us,” he growls, the anger radiating through his tone.
I stare at him blankly. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I throw back at him, scurrying to my feet as rage pulses through my veins, the tears still staining my cheeks. “It’s not you who I’m running from. Your father … fuck. He killed Abigail for fucking sport, just because I refused to let him kill your stupid asses, and you know damn well that you shouldn’t have made it out of that. Your brothers ...”
“My brothers are fine,” Levi tells me before shaking his head. “My father was bluffing. He was never going to kill us. He needs us more than he fears us. It took him two seconds to call his men off and start retreating with the few who could make it out alive. He’s gone.”
“For now,” I mutter darkly before I shove my hands against Levi’s chest as the frustration gets the best of me. He doesn’t move a damn inch, though a weaker man would have toppled back, straight over the edge. “HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?” I yell into the dark night. “YOU ASSHOLES DON’T TELL ME SHIT AND NOW MY FRIEND IS DEAD.”
“Your friend is dead because she was stealing pills from my father and dropping them into the drinks she made at your precious club,” he spits. “Your friend wasn’t a friend. She was fucking scum just like the rest of us. She spiked chicks’ drinks and made easy prey for the assholes waiting out back for them. That’s the bitch you’re screaming about right now, that’s the bitch you’re out here mourning.”
“That’s … no,” I demand, shaking my head, the weight sitting heavily against my chest. “I knew Abigail. You’ve got the wrong girl.”
Levi steps into me, gripping my chin and forcing my stare up to his. “We don’t ever get the wrong girl.”
His words hold a double meaning and it’s not lost on me, especially as I tear my chin out of his tight grip and glare up at him. “Well this time you did.”
Without another word, I take off at a hard sprint across the roof, desperately searching for another way out. If the boys are alive and so is Giovanni, then nothing has changed. I’m still a target, still the girl who Giovanni will use to hold over his sons’ heads. Only Levi has other plans. He’s right there, bounding after me like a fucking tornado destroying everything in its path.
He captures me in no time and, rather than dragging me to a painful stop, he forces me forward, tumbling to my knees and pushing my chest right down to the roof tiles. I’m forced to capture the edge of the roof to keep from falling to my gruesome death below. “Is this what you want?” he spits, grabbing a chunk of my hair and forcing me further down until my chest is slipping right off the edge of the roof. “Do you want me to let go? Let you fall so you can paint the fucking asphalt red?”
“LET ME GO,” I scream, feeling him on his knees behind me, my whole life literally in the palm of his hand. The adrenaline pulses through me, knowing that I won’t be strong enough to hold myself up if he were to release me right now.